If Winter Comes eBook

He suddenly recollected Nona’s letter.
He took it from his pocket and opened it; and the
second event was discharged upon him.

She wrote from their town house:

“Marko, take me away—­Nona.”

His emotions leapt to her with most terrible violence.
He felt his heart leap against his breast as though,
engine of his tumult, it would burst its bonds and
to her. He struck his hand upon the desk.
He said aloud, “Yes! Yes!” He remembered
his words, “If ever you feel you can’t
bear it, tell me.—­Tell me.”

VI

He began to write plans to her. He would come
to London to-morrow.... She should come to the
station if she could; if not, he would be at the Great
Western Hotel. She would telephone to him there
and they could arrange to meet and discuss what they
should do.... He would like to go away with her
directly they met, but there were certain things to
see to. He wrote, “But I can only take
you—­”

His pen stopped. Familiar words! He repeated
them to himself, and their conclusion and their circumstance
appeared and stood, as with a sword, across the passage
of his thoughts. “But I can only lead you
downwards. I cannot lead you upwards ...”

As with a sword—­

He sat back in his chair and gazed upon this armed
intruder to give it battle.

VII

The morning passed and the afternoon while still he
sat, no more moving than to sink lower in his seat
as the battle joined and as he most dreadfully suffered
in its most dreadful onsets. Towards five o’clock
he put out his hand without moving his position and
drew towards him the letter he had begun. The
action was as that of one utterly undone. He
very slowly tore it across, and then across again,
and so into tiniest fragments till his fingers could
no more fasten upon them. He dropped his arm
away and opened his hand, and the white pieces fluttered
in a little cloud to the floor.

Presently he drew himself up to the table and began
to write, writing very slowly because his hand trembled
so. In half an hour he blotted the few lines
on the last sheet:

“...So, simply what I want to do is to let our
step—­if we take it—­be mine,
not yours. We shall forget absolutely that you
ever wrote. It’s as though it had never
been written. On Tuesday I will write and ask
you, ‘Shall I come up to you?’ So if you
say ‘Yes’ the action will have been entirely
mine. It will start from there. This hasn’t
happened. And during these days in between, just
think like anything over what I’ve said.
Honour can’t have any degree, Nona, any more
than truth can have any degree: whatever else
the world can quibble to bits it can’t partition
those: truth is just truth and honour is just
honour. And a marriage vow is a pledge of honour
like any other pledge of honour, and if one breaks
it one breaks one’s honour, never mind what the
excuse is. There’s no conceivable way of
arguing out of that. That’s what I shall
ask you to do on Tuesday and I’m just warning
you so you shall have time to think beforehand.”